Ethan Frome is a legend “but by but from various people” (1)
Therefore is like a fairy tale “each time it was different” (1)
The cold, harsh starkfield winter is like an army at war sieging the village
“February had pitched their white tents” (3)
“Wild Cavalry of March winter” (3)
Lots of characterization for Ethan in this chapter
Pain due to “neither poverty nor physical suffering” (4)
“an incarnation of its [Starkfield’s] frozen woe” (5)
“Ethan Frome drove in silence, the reins loosely held in his left hand, his brown seamed profile, under the the helmet-like peak of the cap, relieved against the banks of snow like the bronze image of a hero” 5
Characterization of Ned Hale
Narrator Visits Frome Home
“Woman’s voice droning querulously”
Zeena is a drone!
“The house was bigger in my father’s time; I had to take down the ‘L,’ a while back” 8
Took down his main source of warmth
House framed by hemlock
Hemlock kills stuff
“...we came to an orchard of starved apple-trees writhing over a hillside among outcroppings of slate that nuzzled up through the snow like animals pushing out their noses to breathe” 7
Apples can represent desire. This is the first sign of a passion/desireless relationship that Ethan might be in.
Chapter 1
Ethan remembers physics course he took at University of Worcester
Had to return to care for Mother
Ethan spies on Mattie through the church window
She wears a “cherry-coloured ‘fascinator’ about her head” (12)
Ethan is in love!
Ethan is jealous of Denis Eady and his look of “impudent ownership” he gives mattie (13)
“conquest of the Starkfield maidenhood” (13)
“invited a horse-whipping” (13)
Ethan walks Mattie back from the Church and she speaks the words to his soul
“it looks just as if it was painted” (14)
Zeena complains about Mattie’s housework and suggests hiring a new girl because Mattie will be off maring Denis Eady soon anyway
Chapter 2
Mattie refuses ride with Denis Eady
Ethan makes his promise to Mattie that they’ll come back and coast someday
He’ll steer them clear of the tree unlike when Ned Hale and Ruth Varnum nearly crashed
Ethan tests Mattie by mentioning her leaving and being satisfied by her distress
Hemlock trees and graveyard here!
Zeena shows up in the door like a witch and shocks Ethan
Some tension before bed between Ethan and Zeena
Chapter 3
Ethan regrets not kissing Mattie the previous night
Mattie’s parents are dead and her father’s business’ failure is how she ended up broke, working for relatives without pay
Zeena announces she plans to leave and stay with her Aunt
Ethan gets excited about the prospect of alone time with Mattie
Ethan tells Zeena that Jotham Powell will take her to the train
He wants every moment he can get with Mattie
Chapter 4
Zeena originally came to help Ethan when his mother went queer
Mother used to be a talker
Zeena is just like Mattie
Ethan originally grateful for the help and company
Ethan and Zeena originally planned to move out of Starkfield, but Zeena got sick
Ethan suspects she faked sickness
Zeena stopped talking except to complain- just like Ethan’s mother
went “queer. Women did, he knew”
He passess Nade Hale and Ruth Varnum kissing- in the same spot he and Mattie had stood last night!
Ethan sees “Endurance” on the gravestone
Mattie greets Ethan at the door just like Zeena greeted them earlier
Mattie and Ethan accidentally touch each other on milk jug
“the cat” breaks Zeena’s pickle dish
Chapter 5
Mattie and Ethan “enjoy” an evening by the fire with Mattie sewing
Exactly like he and Zeena do…
Ethan discusses going sledding with Mattie but relishes too much in the “sense of protection and authority” (38) to notice her disappointment at not actually sledding
“lids sank slowly” (38)
Ethan kisses the end of her fabric- how scandalist!
He makes his second move and they almost touch hands
Ethan “poked aimlessly at the embers” (40)
Mattie seems shocked that Zeena hasn’t spoken to Ethan about her work ethic
“she hasn’t said anything to you”
“Now, in the warm lamp-lit room, with all its ancient implications of conformity and order, she seemed infinitely farther away from him and more unapproachable.” (?)
Chapter 6
Ethan sends Jotham to fetch Zeena once more while he goes into town to get glue to fix the pickle dish- but he does not beat zeena and jotham home
Horse gets injured and Ethan must wash its cut, so Jotham can handle zeena
Zeena goes upstairs without a word
Ethan doesn't bother to check on her
Jotham rejects a free warm dinner because he can sense Zeena’s fury
Chapter 7 - It all goes down!
Ethan goes up to Zeena’s bedroom and finds her sitting “bolt upright” (46)
Ethan finds himself torn between wanting her to die and compassion for Zeena
he is still a good man at the core
recognizes she “wanted sympathy, not consolation” ( 47) and he gives it, somewhat
Ethan declares that a hired girl is on the way by order of the doctor and Mattie must leave
Zeena catches Ethan’s lie about going to see Andrew Hale for 50 dollars
Ethan goes so far as to clench his fist in the brawl!
They can't even see each other- not even fights have passion
“through the obscurity which hid their faces their thoughts seemed to dart at each other like serpents shooting venom” (48)
Ethan tries to convince Zeena by asking “‘what do you suppose folks’ll say of you?’” (50)
“a mysterious alien presence, an evil energy secreted from the long years of silent brooding … she meant to take the one thing” (50-51)
Ethan breaks the news to Mattie bluntly and is “overcome with shame”
Mattie and Ethan weep together as they realize Mattie has nowhere to go; Mattie is “like a broken branch”
Zeena discovers the broken pickle dish and is overcome with grief as it was “‘the one I cared for most of all’” (54)
“short spasm of sobs that passed and left her more than ever like a shape of stone” (54) she is still a witch
Chapter 8
Ethan retreats to the little room he made when he first came back home from Engineering school
Mattie leaves him a note that says “Don’t trouble Ethan” 55
“It was the first time that Mattie had ever written to him, and the possession of the paper gave him a new sense of her nearness; yet it deepened his anguish by reminding him that henceforth they would have no other way of communicating with each other” 55
Ethan thinks about leaving and his options- someone his age shouldn’t be stuck in his kind of predicament- “Confused motions of rebellion stormed in him” 55
Dreams about divorcing Zeena, marrying Mattie, and going west but realizes that this is not possible-FATE-cue the depression
“There was no way out- none. He was a prisoner for life, and now his one ray of light was to be extinguished” 57
Ethan remembers that he was supposed to take Mattie out coasting this night
Ethan then falls asleep and Mattie appears behind him in the morning because she listened all night and didn’t hear him come back upstairs
Ethan concocts plan to extort money from Andrew Hale, but stops when Mrs. Hale says, “You’ve had an awful mean time, Ethan Frome” 60
“He was a poor man, the husband of a sickly woman, whom his desertion would leave alone and destitute; and even if he had had the heart to desert her he could have done so only by deceiving two kindly people who had pitied him. He turned and walked slowly back to the farm” 61
Chapter 9
When Ethan gets back from town, he comes back to find Mattie forced to attempt to lug her suitcase on her own, so he goes up to help her
He finds her sobbing because she thought that she’d never see Ethan again
Ethan actually openly defies Zeena for once and decides that he will be the one to drive Mattie over to the Flats
Zeena doesn’t say goodbye to Mattie
“Ethan, looking slowly about the kitchen, said to himself with a shudder that in a few hours he would be returning to it alone” 65
They stop at the picnic spot by Shadow Pond where Ethan found Mattie’s locket and where Mattie originally started liking him; Ethan came there by accident on the day when Mattie started liking him
Ethan and Mattie begin to talk about their options as their love for each other is now in the open
Mattie shows Ethan that she found the note he had begun to write to Zeena about him leaving and going with Mattie to the west
They go coasting down the hill once and come back up and kiss in the same spot where Ned and Ruth kissed
why did Mattie want to go again- “So’t we’ll never come up any more” 70
After Ethan tells her she’s crazy for contemplating sled suicide“I’m not crazy; but I will be if I leave you” 71
Ethan sits in front
He thinks of the horse at all times
“Oh, Matt, I thought we’d fetched it...I ought to be getting him his feed…” 73
Epilogue
The “querulous drone” 74 could have been either woman
They both ended up as witches
“...and her dark eyes had the bright witch-like stare that disease of the spine sometimes gives” 74
Mattie is paralyzed from the neck down
“There was one day, about a week after the accident, when they all thought Mattie couldn’t live. Well, I say it’s a pity she did. I said it right out to our minister once, and he was shocked at me. Only he wasn’t with me that morning when she first came to...And I say, if she’d ha’ died, Ethan might ha’ lived; and the way they are now, I don’t see’s there’s much difference between the Fromes up at the farm and the Fromes down there in the graveyard; ‘cept that down there they’re all quiet, and the women have got to hold their tongues.” 77 (last words in book)
Ethan Frome
Is “striking” and strong like a prince, but also “a ruin of a man” (1)
“careless powerful” (1)
“how gallantly his lean brown head with its shock of light hair” (2)
He is also imprisoned by something “each step like the jerk of a chain” (1)
Has a mark of greatness “red gash across Ethan Frome’s forehead” (1)
But is it really a mark of greatness? Or rather a mark of fatality? Represents the fact that he had no choice but to sled suicide-fatality
Had a “smash up” which everybody in town remembers the exact date of
It affected the entire community
Perhaps this relates to marriage! Marriage is about the progression of society and they smashed it up- how could society forget?
Is smart but didn't leave starkfield like most do- The harsh winter and isolate of starkfield has had an effect on Ethan
“most of the smart ones get away” (2)
“Guess he’s been in Starkfield too many winters” (2)
profound accumulated cold of many Starkfield winters”
Always caring for others but nobody cares for him
“it’s always Ethan done the caring” (2)
Pain due to “neither poverty nor physical suffering” (4)
“his soul swelled with pride as he saw how his tone had subdued her. She did not even ask what he had done. Except when he was steering a big log down the mountain to his mill he had never known such a thrilling sense of mastery” (36) - When Ethan reassures mattie that the pickle dish is okay
‘I’ve been in a dream, and this is the only evening we’ll ever have together.’ The return to reality was as painful as the return to consciousness after taking an anesthetic” (40)
Zeena Frome
“had grumbled increasingly” (15)
“her silence seemed deliberately assumed to conceal far-reaching intentions” 30
“then she too fell silent. Perhaps it was the inevitable effect of life on the farm, or perhaps, as she sometimes said, it was because Ethan ‘never listened’” (30)
Frome House
“an orchard of starved apple-trees” (7)
Life, rebirth, and desire are all gone
“animals pushing their noses to breathe”
Environment is starving
The New England L is missing- Ethan took it down
“the chief sources of warmth and nourishment” (8)
Ned Hale
She is town gossip machine and judger of sins
Her mansion is symbolic of her position
“stood at one end of the main street … looking down a flagged path between Norway spruces to … the Congregational church” (3)
She can “judge people with detachment” (4) because of “a finer sensibility and a little more education” (4)
She does not speak of Ethan Frome because she feels bad for him
Mattie Silver
She wears a “cherry-coloured ‘fascinator’ about her head” (12)
Notes and Quotes
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7 - It all goes down!
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Epilogue
Ethan Frome
Zeena Frome
Frome House
Ned Hale
Mattie Silver
Denis Eady